17 October 2023
Some readers will throw a fit, not getting past the next paragraph. Your feelings are not the issue.
Let's make one thing clear: suicide in itself is not necessarily a sin. The Bible recognizes how suicide might be a noble path out of an impossible situation. It might be a little cowardly in some cases, but it's still a valid choice in just a few extreme situations.
Calling it "self-murder" is a lie from Hell. That whole frame of mind comes from the idolatrous pagan background of western culture, the Germanic tribal feudalism that turns people into property of the state. In America, the only reason "life is precious" is because your sole purpose for living is as an economic asset for the state. You are not permitted to kill yourself because the state may still have use for you. If that's all we have to live for, then suicide is righteous.
Thus, we come to the whole point: Suicide is the result of the perception that the case for dying is stronger than the case for living. This life is crappy. Humans need a reason to keep on living.
Invariably, our Lord provides that reason. We have a mission and a purpose. When that purpose expires, we could, like Christ, simply give it up and die without doing any violence to ourselves. More likely, we'll be in a situation where the natural mortality of our human existence simply overcomes the life force. There's a natural entropy for this animal existence. The material itself cannot self-vivify. It requires God's constant personal prodding to generate life from this stuff. It has a shelf-life, after which it naturally dissolves. We were not designed for this, but were created to manage this from an exterior eternal existence.
The only valid reason for living is to glorify His Name. All other purposes evaporate with the mist. This is the proper perspective for addressing the subject of suicide itself, but even more so suicide in the military and among veterans. As the linked article warns, neither the military nor VA leadership are serious about solving this problem. They simply want it to go away, but ignoring it hinders their career progression. They must pretend to care, and pretense is all you get from them.
The article addresses the culture issue; it's worse than the author says. What we are seeing is a symptom of the twilight of our American culture. The huge mismatch between what the culture provides and what humans actually need is glaring. Worse, the subculture of the military (and the VA) is even worse than the culture at large. How many ways can we say it? The official government policy is that people (troops) are expendable. Once they cease to be useful, they are even more expendable. But for the leaders to openly admit that would discourage recruitment, so they flat out lie about this in order to draw more volunteers.
The situation is building toward a complete disaster. What few lives that could be salvaged by mitigation will not be saved, as the author laments. People with real talent have always been seen as a threat to government in general, and most assuredly in the military. You might get some enthusiasm from your immediate superiors, but the bureaucracy will hate you.
What are you willing to bet that the bulk of those committing suicide have talents that threaten the system? Those people need some help reorienting on survival against the bureaucracy, of expressing their talents in ways that don't rankle. That's what I did. The losers with no discernible talent are already at home in the military; they are the future leaders.
Oh, and it's the same mindset in corporate management. There's more, but it would take books to address it properly. Just know that God's wrath is fully justified, and this civilization won't be around much longer.
This document is public domain; spread the message.